^| The argument for a future state, as Butler has so well shown, arises from the sense of continuance which there is in our minds. That which is, must be assumed to go on, unless you can bring some decisive proof that it is interrupted. There is no proof, from the reason of the thing or from the analogy of nature, that death is such an interruption. If not, the belief in a present state involves the belief in a future one. But what is to continue ? What is it that is not interrupted ? It is my existence. It is I whom death cannot dissolve ; when it has destroyed everything that is about me, all the conditions in which I am living, it yet leaves me. What is the use of telling me about felicities here- after or miseries hereafter, if you tell me at the same time, if my own heart and conscience tell me, that I shall be the same, with the same capacity for making a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell which I have now ? It can be no message of peace to me, that there is a futurity of bliss or a futurity of misery, unless you can first reveal to me something about myself, unless you can reveal
1 D. J. Burrell.
300 THE HARVEST OF THE JUSTIFIED
to me how I may not be the subject of a perpetual intestine war. And this must be a present message. It cannot be merely of something which is to be. "Watchfulness to avoid future evils may be a very desirable quality. But what is it, if I think that I am myself the great evil of which I need to be rid ? Hope may be the most glorious of all possessions. What can I hope for, if my own being is my continual terror and torment ? 1
Man's life is but a working day
Whose tasks are set aright: A time to work, a time to pray,
And then a quiet night. And then, please God, a quiet night Where palms are green and robes are white; A long-drawn breath, a balm for sorrow, And all things lovely on the morrow.2
1 F. D. Maurice. ■ C. G. Rossetti.
God's own Love.
301
Literature.
Aitken (W. H. M. II.), God's Everlasting Yea, 99.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, iv. 182.
Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 170.
Camj)bell (R. J.), Thursday Mornings at the City Temple, 174.
Du Bose (W. P.), The Gospel according to Saint Patd, 141.
Finney (C. G.), Sermons on Gospel Themes, 204, 307.
Hall (C. C), The Gospel of the Divine Sacrifice, 1.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, i. 101.
Knox-Little (W. J.), Manchester Sermons, 148.
Maclaren (A.), Triumphant Certainties, 275.
„ Expositions of Holy Scripture : Romans, 95.
Macnutt (F. B.), The Riches of Christ, 234. Schleiermacher (F. E.), Selected Sermons, 372. Simon (D. W.), Twice Bom, 94. Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 278. Temple (F.), Sermons, i. 264. Trumbull (H. C), Our Misunderstood Bible, 164. Christian World Pulpit, iv. 424 (Beeclier) ; vii. 339 (Hubbard); xv. 280
(Solomon) ; xxxv. 10 (M'Hardy) ; lix. 212 (Morrison). Homileiic Review, lix. 72 (11'Lane).
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God's own Love.
But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. — Rom. v. 8.
1. Why does the Cross of Jesus Christ win our devotion ? What is the attraction by which it draws us and holds us to Him ? It is because of the supreme expression which it gives to the love of God. " While we were yet sinners," provoking only the Divine displeasure, God places beyond all doubt, "commends," i.e. proves, the depth and the strength of His love towards us by persevering in His purpose to compass our salvation even to the sacrifice of His dear Son.
2. So love is the starting-point. Faith requires a starting- point from which to pursue its course, a fundamental idea on which to build, an underlying ultimate cause, in which, as in Calvary's rock, to plant the Cross. Deny this to faith, and faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified becomes a vague and fitful conception, floating about a cross which is rather a figure of speech than a. fixed and unalterable reality. The soul hungers to find that starting-point. It cannot take Jesus Christ and Him crucified as an incident, an afterthought, an heroic rescue devised in an emergency. It feels instinctively that the Cross must be the result of some deeper cause. It demands to be led to that deeper cause, that it may make it the starting-point of thought. Such a starting-point is provided in the formula : The Atonement not the cause of God's Love, but Love the cause of the Atonement.
^[ The Atonement is the expression on earth of a love that filled God's heart from the beginning. The Atonement is God's self-giving to save us from the holy wrath under which our sins have brought us. The love of the holy God is the starting-point from which to think one's way up to Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Begin there, with the knowledge that God is love. Be sure that a holy God loves you. Be sure that because He is
304 GOD'S OWN LOVE
holy, His wrath, the indignant, sorrowful wrath of holy love, is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Be sure that that tremendous love has expressed itself in sacrificial suffering to save you from that tremendous wrath. Take these thoughts, put them together, and realise two facts: the nature of sin, the Person of Christ. Eealize the nature of sin; it is a scorn of the Atonement, a contempt of God's supreme declaration of love, a delivering over of one's self to wrath, the wrath which is, because God is holy. Eealize the Person of Christ. Behold in Him the Holy God whose wrath is revealed against sin, suffering in the flesh for love, to save from that wrath. Eealize the Godhead of Christ. Grasp the sense in which Christ declares the Unity of Godhead when He says : " I and my Father are one ; " and realizing the Unity of the Godhead, bow before the Cross as before a throne.1